Tacoma voters to decide on street improvement tax. Where will money be spent?
Tacoma city officials their plan to spend money generated by an upcoming streets tax measure would give them flexibility, but some people say the city is shirking responsibility by not committing to a fixed map or list of projects.
City officials estimate that Proposition 1 on this year’s Aug. 4 ballot, a tax measure the city is also calling “Connect Tacoma,” would yield $320 million in both revenues and grant funding through a $0.20 per $1,000 of assessed value property tax and 1.5% utility tax. If approved, the city would decide how to spend the money based on a variety of factors like the long-term projects identified in an existing list of capital projects and the changing maintenance needs for the city’s roadways.
The list of capital projects, also known as the city’s Transportation Improvement Program, is an annually-updated document that the state requires governments to complete to qualify for state grant funding.
Connect Tacoma is the city’s second attempt to gain voter approval for a streets measure. Its first attempt failed in April 2025. That measure came on the heels of the expiration of a previous 10-year streets initiative that voters approved to start in 2015.
For the failed 2025 streets initiative, the city identified an “opportunity map,” listing an array of projects it could take on using streets-initiative dollars if voters approved, according to city documents. For the first streets initiative that started in 2015, city officials didn’t publish a map and instead identified three categories of projects and listed specific goals for each category – like paving all 167 blocks of gravel streets in the city.
Corey Newton, Tacoma’s deputy public works director, said the city identified the approach to allocating funding from Connect Tacoma based on recommendations from the community levy committee, an advisory board made up of Tacoma residents and stakeholders who provided feedback on the measure.
It was the community levy committee, Newton said, that advised the city to use a flexible approach to spending for streets-initiative revenue. The city must solicit public input to draft annual updates to the transportation improvement program, and Newton said the committee supported using that list because it already incorporated a wide range of feedback.
If the city commits to a list of projects now and the city’s needs change in the future, it would be stuck, he added.
“[We’d be] stuck with those projects, regardless if it’s the biggest need for the city or community at the time,” Newton told The News Tribune.
“I thought that made a lot of sense,” he said.
Connect Tacoma doesn’t commit to funding specific projects, but it does state that 50% of the funding will be spent on street safety, 26% on improving the quality of neighborhood streets and 24% on improving connections – access to transit, schools and business.
What critics say
Some say that the spending plan isn’t sufficient, that they’d rather see the city commit to funding a set list of projects to guarantee success.
Cheri Solien, a resident of Tacoma’s West End, said without having that list of projects from the city, she’s worried her neighborhood will be left behind. The city’s outlook on transportation and mobility is informed by an “equity-based approach,” city spokesperson Maria Lee said. Solien said that sometimes puts West Tacoma low on the priority list.
“The engineers have to use it to guide the project spending, and when that happens, areas like the West End get left behind because they say we’re a ‘high opportunity district,’” she told The News Tribune.
Steven Cook, who helped write the statement against the streets-initiative measure in the voter pamphlet, said he’d rather have voters be fully informed on the list of projects the city would accomplish up front instead of letting the city have the flexibility to decide over time.
“That would be a better approach, in my viewpoint,” Cook told The News Tribune.
Opposing perspectives
Nathe Lawver, a member of the committee that has been advocating for the measure’s passage, said the approach to spending Connect Tacoma dollars much more closely mirrors that of the 2015 streets measure, which he said was a thoughtful and ultimately successful approach.
“They’re looking at being equitable in how this is applied across the city, so I don’t have concerns on it,” Lawver told The News Tribune. “But of course we will need to keep an eye to make sure that this is benefiting all of Tacoma.”
Newton said the Transportation Improvement Program, or TIP, and the other factors the city would use to guide Connect Tacoma spending are designed to incorporate and account for community input on the priority list for streets projects.
“As a community member, I prefer a community-driven type project,” he said. “If there’s a large passion for the community to get a project out of the TIP, that can happen.”
